About That with Carl Mayer: Tess Erickson & the Connected Video Spring 2025 Report (Episode 9)

About Tess EricksonTess is a research professional dedicated to understanding what drives consumer behavior from the first spark of interest to the final purchase and beyond Tess conducts proprietary research focused on filling in the knowledge gaps about the modern media consumer as well as creating and reevaluating media strategies for new and existing clients Prior to focusing on media Tess worked in market research at IpsosTranscriptCarl Mayer Welcome to About That I39m Carl Mayer Joining me today for her third time is Tess Erickson Director of Research and Strategy at Involved Media an AMS CompanyThank you for being here againTess Erickson Thank you for having me again CarlCM Now you recently just moments ago hosted a webinar taking everybody through the Connected Audience study for Spring 2025 studying Connected videoEverybody can check it out with the link that accompanies this but just to kind of get into some of the topics a little bit you and I were talking before this episode because we39re cool Tess laughs about data research the surveys and some issues you had with thoseCan you tell us about thatTE Yeah my favorite topic We did end up having some issues with data quality this time that we hadn39t had in previous waves And you know that makes a lot of sense AI has been in the news a lot and it affected us here too that we39ve been used to having bots in our surveys We always do quality checking on our data but this year we had more bots come into our survey than ever before and those bots were giving answers that were actually harder to quality check They were better at giving for instance openended responses that appropriately fit the question we were askingWe did our normal quality checking routine but as we were looking at the data that we got back we realized that we actually needed to do another layer We needed to look at a few more logical parameters and logical flags that would be harder for a bot to check That way we were able to take out a few peopleWe did have a slightly smaller sample this time but it was certainly worth it to make sure that the data quality we got back was what we were used to and that the story that data was telling made senseCM Well it sounds like a huge pain but thank you for doing it because it did make that story more reliable One of the stories that it tells is about SVOD subscriptions which really have slowed Some of them have plateaued but really the story is within that within those subscribersIn that case what39s happening thereTE Sure As you were saying we have seen some stagnation in terms of overall SVOD viewership We have seen maturity in the market that there aren39t a lot of new people trying out SVODs I mean 95 percent 96 of our samples have tried SVODs in the past So there39s not that many people who haven39t tried them to begin withBut what we do see is other than Peacock which had a predictable significant decline from our last wave when we just had the Olympics we didn39t see a lot of movement We just saw slight nonsignificant declines in platform reachBut to match those non significant declines we actually saw significant increases in these platforms average So even with Peacock while there was a 5 decline in platform wage there was only a 2 decline in averageWeamp8217re seeing that over time It39s not an overnight process but over time we are seeing people slowly sign on to the ad supported versions of the platforms or even that they39re just now using these platforms for more live events or sportsThey39re getting served ads on these platforms in that way as well which speaks to why Netflix has been a little bit behind a platform like Amazon Prime or Hulu because they haven39t been able to incorporate as many live events into their offering yetBut that is what we39re primarily seeing that even though the market is matured in terms of viewership the ad market is still progressingCM And with that maturity and people kind of falling into their viewing habits like a lot of data sets it falls into a bell curve where you have the high viewers the heavy viewers and the light viewers on the ends A lot of the moderate viewers most of them are in the middleBut for this study you paid particular attention to the heavy viewersTE We did So you39re right that most viewership especially for SVOD services does fall into that bell curveThe majority of SVOD viewers are watching on a weekly basis Maybe they39re watching daily but they39re only watching an hour or two daily What we see for user generated platforms specifically YouTube and for linear TV is they don39t have necessarily a bell curve to their viewershipThey are more likely to be bimodal in that you have a lot of these really extreme high frequency viewers and a lot of people who are maybe logging in for just an event here or there or maybe a tutorial on YouTube that are balancing that out a little bit that are on much lower endWhereas when we ran this survey we wanted to get a lot more detail and a lot better estimation of how much time people are actually spending with those bimodal platforms where we know that there are a significant percentage of those audiences that are watching more than two hours a day more than 4 hours a day maybe even more than that Maybe that39s our next questionBut that certainly gives us a more clear perspective on the way that these different platforms viewership habits are differentCM Yeah you kind of read my mind with the next question which is that you kind of categorized viewers into 4 breakouts 4 categories You will do a much better job explaining them than me So goTE Tess Laughs Sure Yeah when we looked at all of the data we had about time spent it didn39t really feel like it was telling the full picture like it wasn39t telling us that picture about those extreme linear viewers in the way that I was expectingWhat became clear is that we needed to divide out a few different audiences from that total audience to actually understand what an average person39s diet media diet could actually look like Not what the overall time spent but what an actual person would be doingAnd so we saw 4 main clusters of media behavior Our first cluster was all about YouTube dominant viewing These are people that spend by far the plurality of their time on YouTube that are part of that watching YouTube throughout the day on all of their devices segment They39re actually the least engaged with SVOD content that is not the way that they are really using digital platforms which was surprising to meI definitely thought all of the streaming video would go together but instead we had our YouTube group and then we had with a streaming dominate group So that group over half of what they39re watching is on SVOD platforms They39re especially likely to watch things like Disney Plus or HBO Max compared to other groupsThey also are likely to use Hulu as potentially their hub for a number of different services They do still watch user generated content but they39re much higher income than your YouTube So they can afford to pay for a number of those different SVOD platforms and they39re less free content dependentThe third group we had was a linear group We had a group that actually represented what I was looking for when I was looking at linear data The people that are really heavy linear viewers this makes up more of their content viewing than any other group that they are loyal to linear to a fault but they have been getting into fast services which offer sort of a linear experience for free without adding to that cable billAnd then the fourth group we had is a linear viewing audience as well but they39re a little higher income than the linear loyals They39re also a little higher educated and so they have been more able to incorporate SVOD viewing into what they do as wellThey are watching linear content whether that is through digital or traditional people but they39re also and they39re getting what they love out of that which is morning programming news programming talk programming But they also have added SVOD content especially from the mainstream established platforms like Netflix and Prime that offer something that they aren39t getting on linear and they have that for their prime time viewing as wellSo that39s a sort of quick overview Well there39s definitely much more in the presentation itself But hopefully with those four groups you can see them and you can identify with one of them I do think they give a much easier to visualize representation of who the American media consumer isCM Well there is a lot more in that presentation I encourage everybody to check it out but unfortunately that39s all the time we have for now to kind of touch the surface with itJust some quick housekeeping and some plugs On June 17th Tess is going to present the next connected audience study This will be on gaming If you want there39s another one you can watch right now It39s available on demand This one is from Danny Senor and it39s another connected audience study This one is about sports viewership So check those out especially one that Tess just did about connected videoTess thanks for being here on About ThatTE Thanks for having me again CarlCM Thank you We39ll see you next timeClick to view previous episodesPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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About That with Carl Mayer: Tess Erickson & the Connected Video Spring 2025 Report (Episode 9)

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